So I came home with this guitar last night..........

 
 I seen this guitar in the GC website and ended up buying it for a good price thinking that the EMG 81 and 85 pickups would be slammin' on anything heavy rock. The guitar itself is beautiful, neck through,abalone inlays. mahogany wood, jumbo frets,locking tuners and a graphtech nut. The only thing I might would have missed is a Floyd Rose. This guitar really does have some serious tone.
 
 Now for the bad news......I made a side by side comparison with my other guitars and  I can't really tell much of a difference in the sound,even the sustain seems the same for my bolt on necks with an FR.  My HSS Fender type axe sounds about the same on the bridge pickup which is non active alinco 4s. There may be a slight difference in tone but that could be worked out in the mix. My variax is so close that I might be wasting my money here. I had thought that I would get superior sustain with the neck through and active EMGs, I can't seem to tell a difference.
 
 I played the guitars  through an amp and through my HD500. Am I missing something...maybe I'm deaf?  I might have to take this guitar back even though it is lighter than the others and much nicer to look at.
 

Sounds like you have some deciding to do. Sure is pretty though.

Tim - the most important question is:

did you get permission to bring her home in the first place????

How about screwing 4 3/16" bolts in the back of the neck joint to see if that increases the sustain?

Sometimes it's worth going custom if you want a special color.

I may have to wiki that?

The x is .zipx means x-tra fast.

Nice looking guit-fiddle Tim!

What is it-I have an idea but not sure

If the body is Mahogany, I would think it would do good

The only thing I could think of to maybe improve sustain would be a brass nut and maybe a good heavy set of strings.

It is pretty

 LOL! Yeah I did get permission but I told my wife that the last guitar was the only one I would ever need, now I'm back pedaling to get around that statement. I would still like to get some more guitars one day ;)

 The guitar is a Schecter Hellraiser C-1. I'm not really sure if I can play this in church;).... it is a mahogany body. The thing is I am kind of new to the whole heavy sounding guitar thing and I didn't really know what I wanted.I'm probably not doing the right things.

  I was playing her last night and I am having some serious second thoughts about getting rid of her now. I think maybe it is my technique that isn't getting the results and not the fault of the guitar. I do find myself reaching for a whammy bar with this, however I'm bending more to compensate for the lack of a whammy. I think there is more sustain potential without a whammy bar.

  Mike(digi2ins), Thanks for the heads up on those parts.I'll check it out.  I  noticed some subtle things with the 81/85s. Maybe you can tell the differences. I recorded some tracks last night( I didn't rehearse so  the playing isn't all there or even close lol) anyways I am keeping the guitars a secret . I'll let the word out but wanted to see which sounds you thought were the best. This is purely subjective if you decide to participate.

 If you care to try and see which one is the real Schecter C-1 using EMG 81/85 be my guest. I recorded all of them through an HD500 using the " Singing Lead" sound coming out of the HD into a Mackie with no EQ. sent to Sonar in 24/48 bit via line level at around -3db and exported to Mp3 128.

 There are three guitars involved using both neck and bridge settings.One guitar is a Laguna HSS which is similar to a Fender strat HSS. A JTV69 Variax using a 1958 Les Paul standard setting on both neck and bridge and the Schecter C-1 Hellraiser.

Here are some tracks I played using the different guitars on a rather clean song. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk1.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk2.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk3.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk4.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk5.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk6.mp3

 Some tracks of power chords with the guitars set on the bridge positions.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk7.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk8.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk9.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk10.mp3

Starise


The guitar is a Schecter Hellraiser C-1.

Mike(digi2ins), Thanks for the heads up on those parts.I'll check it out.  I  noticed some subtle things with the 81/85s. Maybe you can tell the differences. I recorded some tracks last night( I didn't rehearse so  the playing isn't all there or even close lol) anyways I am keeping the guitars a secret . I'll let the word out but wanted to see which sounds you thought were the best. This is purely subjective if you decide to participate.

If you care to try and see which one is the real Schecter C-1 using EMG 81/85 be my guest. I recorded all of them through an HD500 using the " Singing Lead" sound coming out of the HD into a Mackie with no EQ. sent to Sonar in 24/48 bit via line level at around -3db and exported to Mp3 128.

There are three guitars involved using both neck and bridge settings.One guitar is a Laguna HSS which is similar to a Fender strat HSS. A JTV69 Variax using a 1958 Les Paul standard setting on both neck and bridge and the Schecter C-1 Hellraiser.

Here are some tracks I played using the different guitars on a rather clean song. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk1.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk2.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk3.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk4.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk5.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk6.mp3

Some tracks of power chords with the guitars set on the bridge positions.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk7.mp3 Laguna Neck

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk8.mp3    Schecter Bridge 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk9.mp3  Variax Neck 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30861263/trk10.mp3  Laguna Bridge

Well I was right on my thoughts of what is was.

Havent actually listened much to Lagunas
So heres my guess on the Power Chords
Like to try later on the others LOL

I almost forgot......

Cool guitar.......

I've only had one guitar with EMG's (a Steinberger) and it DID sound great through a Sansamp PSA, but better through my '79 Mike Soldano-modded Marshall JMP!
 
 
 
Sweet................!!!!!

Starise,

Which pickups are tapped?

The neck is a copper logo so that should be the 89 .....split coil.

The bridge should be an 81, but those are impossible to get muddy. 

Looking at your pic it almost looks like the bridge is a Gold logo 85

And that could get a soft on the bottom , depending on the scenario.


Unlike passives EMG's work best raised up as high as possible.
Literally as close the string as you can get.

Also if you device or amp allows increase the input gain to borderline clipping.


Also change your battery .


See if any of that helps.

Hi Starise,

I'll give you my opinion for what it's worth. With higher gain in your sound, you're not going to notice much difference in guitars, pick-ups or the tone. Gain has a way of hiding those elements.

For example, I can play 5 different guitars in my rig right now and post the results....a few *may* hear a slight difference, the majority will hear no difference unless I use a strat or a tele. Anything with humbucks is going to be close unless you use something with a super distortion or Fernandes sustainer or something.

The same with changing pups....you'll notice differences in presence, maybe some will have more mids...less mids, 4k boost...but there will be nothing mind blowing.

Now, if you go to a clean sound or a very light gain, this is where you start to hear the true tonality within the guitar. Active pups are going to really shine here and stick out more in a good way. Passive pups will have less presence and be less expressive to touch/execution.

I remember during my "pup trial" days where I went to a music store and bought every pup they had to try out. It was amazing how close they all sounded when higher gain was used. But back that gain down, or use a clean sound and then you could hear the differences. You WILL hear differences in the higher gain, but it won't be night and day unless you are comparing say Gibson Dirty Fingers to a Seymour Duncan Custom. No comparisson....the Duncan Custom will obliterate the Gibson in the tone area whether you're using high gain, light gain or a clean sound.

Your best bet when buying guitars where you will be using them for higher gain, is to buy them for feel and playability over looking for a mind-blowing tone difference. The gain will always mask a majority of the tone. You'll hear subtle things, you'll get a little more sustain at times or hear certain frequencies accentuated, but it's never going to be a "wow" factor in my opinion and experience. Most humbuckers that come stock with any kind of rock guitar are going to have a similar output and tone with the differences being so subtle, they may not be worth talking about.

Be careful if you decide to raise the pups up super high like Zungle mentioned. Sometimes if you raise them too high, you can literally get dual tones when trying to tune as the string does something funny when too close to the pup. You can really hear the effects of this as strings get old and tuning can become a nightmare.

My rule of thumb is to chug some chords with higher gain. I raise the bass part of the pup until the notes I chug start to sound like a run on sentence without any percussive attack. When I hear that, I back the pup down until that goes away. For the high end of the pup, I fret the highest note on the neck and adjust the higher end of the pup until it gives me a nice sustain/hold without any weird artifacts. You can get away with raising this side a bit higher. By the time I get done, sometimes my high side is a little higher than my bass side. It depends on the guitar as well as how much output the pups give me in a particular area. Hope some of this helps....good luck and I love the look of that guitar! :)

-Danny

Be careful if you decide to raise the pups up super high like Zungle mentioned. Sometimes if you raise them too high, you can literally get dual tones when trying to tune as the string does something funny when too close to the pup. You can really hear the effects of this as strings get old and tuning can become a nightmare.

 
Yes, been there..............
 
But EMG's are designed to be as close to the string as possible...............with touching it of course............